Kathmandu: A parliamentary committee formed to investigate allegations of budget manipulation by former Finance Minister Janardan Sharma has summoned the minister for recording his statement.
The meeting of the committee held on Tuesday decided to summon Minister Sharma to record his statement on Wednesday and send the hard disk from the Finance Ministry to the forensic lab to Nepal Police, said committee member Bimala BK. She added that experts suggested to the committee members that the data wiped out of the hard disk can be recovered.
Finance Sharma had tendered his resignation on July 16 after a parliamentary committee was formed to investigate accusations against him of manipulating the budget involving outsiders to alter tax rates in the budget speech just before it was presented before the Parliament. Minister Sharma, however, has been denying any wrongdoings.
The House of Representatives had formed the committee to carry out an investigation about the involvement of unauthorized persons in course of preparing the budget for the coming fiscal year 2022/23.
After the news came out, parliamentarians, especially the leaders from the opposition CPN-UML, demanded CCTV footage of the ministry premises in the parliament. Sharma had refused to cooperate to provide the footage.
Despite the legal provisions to maintain the archive for at least three months, Nepal’s Finance Ministry, on July 3, said the CCTV footage has been deleted citing that the CCTV has the capacity to store footage for only 13 days.
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